Tuesday 27 December 2016

A little late


A little late, I know, but it's still Christmastide, and  I heard this beautiful piece of festive music by Schoenberg the other day and it's stayed with me. Enjoy...

3 comments:

  1. It's an arrangement of a 16th-century motet (A Spotless Rose) by Praetorius.

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  2. Yes Nige, with this wonderful mid-period miniature he reminded us of his debt to Johannes Brahms, a composer with more than 20 years still to live when Schoenberg was born. Also, thankfully, we are reminded of the pull of romanticism that never really left him and, as he composed this as a resolute Lutheran, the torture he must have endured alongside the rise of Hitler, an event he foretold, only re-committing to Judaism in his late fifties.

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  3. Thanks MM - the more I learn about Schoenberg the more fascinating (and tragic) he becomes...

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